


you couldn't (handle)

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 30 days writing challenge, Anxiety Disorder, Gen, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Aunt Peggy spent some time in Japan on her secret government business, and she was the one who taught him how to fold cranes.  She said he reminded her of her when she was young–so restless and determined and refusing to settle for anything less than everything</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	you couldn't (handle)

Tony folds paper cranes. Again and again, creasing the paper between his fingers until they turn into something more. It started as a way to gauge how bad his trembling was, as a way to move his fingers without the danger of placing his tools in his hands. 

(He’s known that his work could be a danger to himself since he stared one of his weapons in the face, since he woke up and felt firsthand how one of his weapons had broken his heart, since Obie reached into chest and broke his heart all over again. He’s known it could be a danger, but his work is his sanctuary and his home all in one, and sometimes he thinks it’s the only thing he truly knows how to do.)

He hasn’t been counting the cranes, although he’s sure JARVIS has. Hasn’t been counting the cranes, because he’s only just pushing away the images that cling too closely to his skin, to his lungs, to the tissue paper-thin fabric of his brain. His fingers are deft as he works, even if they’re still trembling, even if he’s still trembling, even if this is the third night this week that he’s woken up with nightmares, and it’s Tuesday going on Wednesday, and his hands have gone scrabbling to make sure the Arc Reactor was still there enough times that he’s got scratches on his chest from his blunt fingernails.

_Alive alive alive alive alive._

Part of him wants more concrete proof that there’s still blood pumping through his veins, air pumping through his lungs. Part of him isn’t so sure of his own senses.

(Part of him knows that he’s the last person he should ever believe.)

Aunt Peggy spent some time in Japan on her secret government business, and she was the one who taught him how to fold cranes. She said he reminded her of her when she was young–so restless and determined and refusing to settle for anything less than everything. He lost his way sometime after high school–lost touch with her, too–but this, it turns out, is muscle memory.

This he can do in the moonlight out on the balcony, only just shivering in the cold night air breeze, only just shivering because he fell (and fell and _fell_ ). He didn’t die. He’s never died, not yet, not even when his heart’s stopped, not even when he wanted to.

He closes his eyes, and slides his fingertips down the paper, feeling new paper cuts on his skin, feeling old paper cuts in his lungs. Every single one of the cranes he’s tossed over the balcony when he’s finished. Every single one of them has floated down towards the street below, and he thinks they’ll be littered across New York City in the morning, a testament to his inability to work, a testament to his fragile hold on his own life, a testament to Peggy Carter’s hand on his cheek, on his shoulder, when he was nine years old and so frustrated he was almost crying.

“You need to clear your mind,” she’d said, and he’d scowled up at her, because his mind was never clear, didn’t she understand? It was always shapes and figures and calculations and too much tangled up together. She’d smiled, though, softly. “I know a thing or two about wanting to forget things,” she’d said. “It’s a different premise, but it might work, mightn’t it?”

His fingertips are dry against dry paper, and he licks them, rubs them together to soften them, a momentary break only and then he’s back to folding almost rotely. His eyes are open, but for all they’re seeing the paper in his hands they might as well be closed.

He’s still breathing. _(Fold.)_ His heart is still beating. _(Fold.)_ His Arc Reactor is still working. _(Fold.)_ He’s still alive. _(Fold.)_

_But it might work, mightn’t it?_

JARVIS will know how many he’s folded, how close he is to a thousand. JARVIS will know, but he doesn’t want to ask yet, doesn’t want to know, because he doesn’t know what he’s wishing for, doesn’t know what he’s going to do if nothing ever changes.

He just wants to work. He just wants to _work._ He just needs to get his fingers under control, get his body back under his control, just needs to stop failing himself and start taking back what’s supposed to be _his._

(Things that are _his_ that he’s never been able to take back:

his parents, his weapons, his trust in Obie, his own beating heart, his face in the mirror, his mistakes, his mistakes and his mistakes and his _mistakes,_ and now his trembling fingers that he can’t force control over.)

He tightens his hands on reflex, tightens them up into fists, until his muscles ache, until he crushes the half-finished paper crane in his grasp. He bows his head, just a little, and focuses on his breathing, on in-out-in-out. Slowly, slowly, slowly he unfurls his fists. Lets the crushed paper crane fall to the ground at his bare feet. He wants–he wishes–

Well. There are plenty of unnameable things that live in his heart, unnameable things with sharp teeth and sharper hearts.

He pulls a new sheet from the pile, and starts over again.

(Number 483, he doesn’t say, because he isn’t keeping count.)

_Finis_


End file.
